Corn Fields or Cadillacs
by SCWLC
Summary: The boys have saved the world. They've partied. Now what? This is going to be a series of one-shots, each one hopefully standing on its own, but there will be an arc.
1. I'd Rather Ride Around With You

Title: Corn Fields or Cadillacs

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own nothing, the title is borrowed from one of the songs by the group Farmer's Daughter.

Summary: So . . . the boys have saved the world. They've partied. Now what?

Rating: PG

Notes: This is a rapid one-off. I might follow it up with a sort-of-arc, but I don't really have any real direction. Also, the suicide with holy oil thing, I borrowed from someone else. I know the story is up on the spn_gen LiveJournal community, but I can't seem to find the fic. So, I make no claim to it, but I honestly can't recall who wrote it first.

* * *

It had been a week since they'd averted the apocalypse. Seven days since they'd stopped the End of Days.

It was going to take longer than a week for either of them to deal with the fact that it had actually been that easy. It seemed that the way the war between Good and Evil ultimately came down to a winner-takes-all one-on-one. Lucifer vs. Michael. The trouble would have been that the battle itself would have destroyed the world. Much like a fight between Godzilla and Mothra, the damage would have been incidental. The way that whole buildings get crushed when the monster gets tossed around.

Lucifer and Michael had put in an appearance, managing to create noncorporeal, ghostly bodies so they could talk to Sam and Dean. Ranged on either side were masses of possessed people. Some by demons, some by angels, all of them lined up and waiting for their leaders to go at it. There was just one thing they needed to start.

"Dean, you must say yes. Let me in. If you do not, Lucifer will destroy everything."

"So . . . why isn't he destroying everything right now?" Dean asked.

Michael remained silent, but a demon shouted, "He can't order us to do anything until he has his vessel."

Dean turned, and saw a demon getting smacked around by his fellows, and Sam, clearly in the midst of a similar conversation, at the other end of the large, isolated field they had gathered at. He turned back to Michael. "Let me guess. You can't do anything either, until I say yes."

"No," Michael said. "This is why it is imperative that you say yes before your brother agrees to be Lucifer's vessel."

Sam was on his way over, Lucifer and some of his lieutenants in tow. Dean went to meet him, Michael and Zachariah trailing after. "Dude, you gettin' this?"

Sam's smile was a beautiful thing to see. It had been so long since they'd felt able to smile, and Dean felt his face grin in answer. "It's like a Mexican standoff," Sam said. "Neither of them can do anything until we say yes, but as long as neither of us says yes . . ."

"Nothing happens."

They both turned to their respective angels and said, in unison, "No."

Lucifer and Michael shared an almost panicked look, and they started trying to speak. Before either of them said anything, Sam added, "And silence does not mean consent, neither does consent achieved while Dean or me are not fully conscious and aware of what we are agreeing to, it doesn't count in the small print on a contract that we didn't read because it looked like a standard form, and it doesn't count as implicit to anything. The only agreement to this that counts, is if one of us clearly, and in specific, non-sarcastic or ironic speech agrees to be possessed by one of you."

"What?" Dean asked Sam.

"Just in case they decided to whisper the question, time it so that you're nodding or saying yes to something else, and then say that you – or me – agreed because we nodded immediately after they asked, even though the nod wasn't referring to _that_ question."

"Oh," Dean said. "What he said," he added, gesturing at Sam.

That was when things got kind of weird. "This is your fault!" Lucifer snapped at Michael.

"My fault? How is it my fault?" Michael demanded. "Just because you don't have enough control over your minions to keep them from convincing my vessel that it's better for him not to allow me in?"

"No. The fact that you just had to agree when Father insisted on these rules and bound us all with them so we can't even do anything, now that he's gone!"

"He wouldn't have had to do it if you would just have done as you were told!"

"Me! I'm not the one who kept breaking up continental plates because he can't control his lightning!"

From there it degenerated into name-calling and fisticuffs between the two spirit-form archangels. It was kind of like watching children on a playground. Dean could have sworn he saw hair-pulling happening.

A plan had sprung into being, Sam had jerked his head at Dean, and the two of them had managed to circle around the arguing pair, and their lieutenants, with holy oil, and light it up, without any interference. The original plan had been to say 'yes', using the holy oil they had in quantity to set themselves on fire. It would have been a horrible way to die, but it would have left Lucifer and Michael trapped, unable to do anything. But with them arguing, and the accompanying angels and demons taking sides in the fight, everyone there was distracted. As the fight went on, looking more and more like two men brawling than two mighty angels in mortal combat, Sam and Dean circled around, creating a circle of holy oil. No one noticed, until it was too late, Dean bending down and lighting it up.

That had stopped the arguing, but had left Lucifer, Zachariah, a bunch of other jerks they didn't know the names of, and Michael all stuck together in the circle, unable to go anywhere.

There had been shouting, threats and a whole lotta shuffling on the part of the gathered armies. In this case, cutting off the snake's head really worked. Without their bosses able to command, both armies fell apart and sort of wandered off, muttering and disappointed. A phone call to Cas, and suddenly he was there, with a message and a gift from God.

The gift? God had arranged for Cas to briefly have the power to leave those angels all isolated there, no company but each other for eternity. The message? "At least _someone_ understands that I wanted humanity to have the free will to choose their own endings."

So it was a week later, they'd won, and now both of them were left contemplating what to do next. They were contemplating it over an extra-large super-supreme pizza with extra cheese, wings, cheesy garlic bread and a caesar salad to salve Sam's food-conscience. They'd gotten lucky for once, without the aid of a rabbit's foot, and been the 1,000th customers at the little pizzeria.

While Dean went to the bathroom, Sam contemplated the newspaper a previous customer had left in the booth. By the time Dean came back, Sam was frowning a little wryly at the newspaper. "So, do you want to keep hunting?" Sam asked.

"Why are you askin'?"

Sam sighed. "Because it's all over. We beat Yellow Eyes, avenged Mom, Jessica and Dad, stopped the Apocalypse, got the go-ahead from God. We could stop. We don't have to keep going."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Point taken. We could set up somewhere, try to get a normal life." He looked a little wistful. "Have kids and a white picket fence and all that crap."

"Exactly," Sam said. He took a deep breath, "But . . ."

"But?"

"Do you think either of us could really settle down? I mean, how long before we start seeing stuff in the paper," Sam gestured at the story he'd circled while waiting, "and thinking we should really go deal with it?"

"You found a job?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam said. "But I thought we should think about this. If you don't want to, if you want to stop, we should stop."

"Do you want to stop?" Dean asked.

"Yes, and no."

"Yeah. Me too."

There was a long pause. A waitress came by and freshened their drinks, Dean ate two slices and five wings, and Sam got halfway through the salad, thick with bacon, parmesan cheese, olive oil and croutons.

"What's the case?" Dean finally asked.

"Uh . . . someone wound up testing a local urban legend about a ghost that kills virgin teenaged boys," Sam said. "She used to be a prostitute and was killed by some hardcore religious nut virgin man-"

Dean smirked and his whole body twitched as he tried not to burst into laughter.

"Anyhow. The story goes that if you go into the old bordello, she'll sleep with you, and if you're not good enough . . . um . . ."

"In the sack?" Dean asked.

Sam closed his eyes, seeking patience to deal with the crassness that could only come from his brother. "Yes," he said finally. "Anyhow if you're not good, she kills you, assuming you're a virgin. At least, that's what the story says the legend is. Thing is, there's a strip joint in the building where the bordello used to be, and a kid went there with his friends."

Dean figured out the rest. "His friends said he went off with some chick who apparently doesn't work there, but seemed like she was planning on sleeping with the guy, and now he's dead?"

"Yup."

A moment's contemplation. "So . . . killer hooker ghost that sleeps with people in a strip club."

Sam rolled his eyes and smiled as he chorused with Dean, his voice resigned but amused, Dean's eager. "We're going."

"Damn skippy," Dean said. "Eat some pizza."

Looks like they had work to do.


	2. Got Nothin' Better to Do

Notes: So, I'm going with my fairly limited arc after all. There'll be a couple 'casefics', but since the case isn't the point of this arc, I'm not going to go into detail. I just have a little idea that I want to explore. This is actually filler on the way through the arc, so I hope you enjoy it.

They'd gotten to the town and settled into the usual motel, but their streak of luck from the pizza restaurant seemed to be holding. Sam came back from the motel office to where Dean was waiting in the car to tell him that the owner of the car-themed motel had a special deal for people with cars of particular interest – whether classic cars, or unusual makes and models.

"Apparently, he says it's good advertising," Sam told Dean. "I told him to come out and take a look. If he thinks your car is classic enough or unusual enough, we'll get half price."

Dean grinned, patted the dash, and said, "I never want to hear you complain about my baby again, Sam."

Dean was less happy hours later, having been turned down by one of the waitresses at the strip club the night before, who'd then gone off with some dork in a dress shirt and jeans that he clearly thought made him look spiffy. Sam, naturally, got an earful on the matter. That night and right through breakfast, hours of research during the morning and, after he'd tossed Dean out for some peace and quiet, upon Dean's return with some much-needed gun-cleaning supplies.

"I think she's our virgin-huntin' ghost Sammy," Dean declared.

Sam sighed, not looking up from his laptop where he was looking into the history of the bordello ghost and tapped in a few new search terms as he looked into a new angle on the ghost's history. "You think that just because she didn't want to sleep with you she has to be unnatural?"

"Well, she's not a lesbian, so what other reason would she have?" Dean asked, seemingly in all honesty.

Rolling his eyes, Sam clicked on the link that came up and started scanning the story page. "Yes, what _possible_ reason could any woman have for not wanting to go out with a guy who seems to have no money and enjoys leering at women," he replied dryly.

"I'll have you know, I wasn't leerin' at her at all," Dean said indignantly.

"The stripper then?" Sam asked.

Dean looked perplexed. "That's her job, right?" he asked. "I mean, the whole point is that they're there to be looked at."

Sam shook his head, and scrolled a little further down. "Well, I think this is our ghost," he said. "Eleanor Whittaker, she worked in the bordello in 1904 and, reading between the lines, she laughed at one of her customers – a pastor – for being bad in bed. He went into a rage and killed her."

Coming up behind him, his brother looked over his shoulder at the picture. "That's the chick that rejected me." Sam just barely controlled his wince, knowing what was coming up. "Hah! I knew she wasn't human!"

"Dean-"

"She musta known I'd be awesome, that's why she didn't want me," he continued.

"Dean-"

"Even ghosts can see how-"

"She was cremated, we're going to have to figure out what's keeping her here," Sam said, interrupting.

He grinned. "So we're gonna be here for a while, huh?"

"Apparently. We're going to have to check out some hard copy records though," Sam said. "I'll start at the library after lunch." He stood up, shutting down his laptop and stuffing it into his carrying bag.

"Maybe I should take the library," Dean said. "I mean, I should probably do at least some of the research. You were right about that during that Paris Hilton gig."

Sam smiled, and said, "Why don't we head for that dive down the road. They have some sort of chilli burger advertised out front."

"Awesome," Dean said enthusiastically.

After a pleasant lunch, during which Dean didn't mock Sam's salad, didn't flirt too horribly with the waitress and didn't try to humiliate Sam, Sam was starting to be a little suspicious. Normally Dean followed up being nice, like offering to take on some of the research without being coerced, with getting a favour out of Sam like spending the night in the Impala so Dean could bring a girl back to their motel room.

"Maybe you'd better hit the strip club this afternoon," Dean said. "You look for different things than I do." They were already in the car and heading to the library as he said this. Sam suddenly realised Dean had been heading for the club the whole time. Dean was right about needing to get a look around for more clues, so Sam reluctantly got out. That was when he knew Dean had set him up.

In front of all the locals, Dean shouted out the window before speeding off, "Maybe that virgin-humpin' ghost'll head for you, Sammy! You look like the type!"

"I can't believe I fell for that," Sam muttered to himself as he passed the laughing locals on his way in.

He wound up spotting the ghost, but she vanished around a corner while he tried to follow her and he didn't find anything interesting out, except that one of the waitresses in the club was going to try to go to university, and she spent most of the time picking his brain on tricks to get in.

"You're a jerk," he groused to his brother as he walked up to the car.

Dean just got out, tossed him the keys and said, "Bitch. I'll be here, I left my notes at the motel. Let me know when you have any ideas."

It took a few days to figure out about her locket, another day to break into the local museum and get it out without being caught, and then they took another night because the motel was cheap enough with the car discount that they could afford the break.

Dean bounded up to Sam that morning saying, "We're going to Climax." He had a deliberately lewd grin on his face, so Sam responded the only reasonable way he could.

"The one in Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio or Pennsylvania?"

That threw Dean offstride, especially since he'd clearly been planning an innuendo. "Whu-"

"There're a lot of them in America, Dean," Sam said, patiently. "Which one are you talking about?"

"There's somethin' that looks like a black dog out in the Pine Ridge County Park in Pennsylvania. Or, at least, the woods around Climax. I'm betting something left the park and made its way to the town."

Sam made a face. "I hate camping."

"You and me both," Dean said. "Speaking of climax-"

"No, Dean," Sam said.

"You didn't even wait for me to finish what I was saying."

"I know you."

"So?"

"So I know when you're going to say something I neither want, nor need, to hear."

They walked past the motel owner who was eagerly talking into the phone, telling someone on the other end about how, "I did it! It's amazing . . ."

Dean just made a face and said, "You'd think after a couple years away from that school you'd go back to talking like a normal person."

If their brotherly poking looked an awful lot like girly slapfighting, the motel owner was kind enough not to mention it as he settled their bill.


	3. That's My Story

Title: That's My Story

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognise, and I don't own the song title I borrowed for this fic, which is from a song performed by Collin Raye back in the 90s.

Summary: Girls. Sleepovers. Pillows flying. Dean. It's a little bit what you'd think.

Rating: PG-13.

Notes: Next in the Cornfields or Cadillacs arc. Follows Got Nothin' Better to Do, but it can be read as a standalone. It's fluff. That's the main thing.

* * *

"The Special Effects Pillow Warehouse?" Sam asked, incredulous.

Dean nodded, looking serious, but slight twitching at the corners of his mouth told Sam there was more to this. "They're haunted or have a poltergeist or something," he said. "Apparently, they just finished moving into the store, and just after they'd opened up, things started flying off the shelves at people. Literally."

"Anyone get hurt?"

"Not yet," Dean told him. "But there was an incident with a birthday sleepover in the back room."

"A sleepover?"

Dean nodded eagerly. "They rent out the back room for people who want to have sleepover parties where they can go wild and have things like pillow fights and stuff. They're hiring security to watch the sleepover parties," he said eagerly. "And there was this thing with a bachelorette party and-"

"A sleepover," Sam repeated.

"Yes. A sleepover. It's one of their services," Dean told him. "I checked their website. They offer sleepover parties with pillowfights, with specially designed pillows that are supposed to explode on impact so that you can have a pillowfight like in the movies."

Sam shook his head, trying to jar loose the images in his brain. "You want us to masquerade as security on a sleepover party in the hopes of getting a look at whatever's causing the trouble with the pillow shop?"

"Yup." Dean looked eager. Sam assumed it was because images of lesbian bachelorette pillow fights in skimpy nightwear were dancing in his head. When Dean did things like this, it was very hard to remember that his brother was an intelligent person with occasional bouts of tactical and mechanical genius. Mostly, they just made him recall how much of a moron his brother could be.

A fact which was driven home very hard, when they found themselves having to stand guard over a thirteen-year-old girl's birthday party. Sam kept his lips tightly pressed together much of the time to keep from sniggering at the eight girls making giant doe-eyes at Dean. He was apparently exempt by virtue of being so tall they had trouble getting a decent look at him. Not that Sam minded. Neither he nor Dean were pedophiles, so Dean's discomfort was very apparent.

This went a long way to easing the worries of the mothers leaving their girls there overnight with no one but Dean, Sam and one female chaperone to keep an eye on things. Dean's clear discomfort and determined discouragement of the girls was reassuring.

It didn't stop the more precocious teens however. "So, if we club together our allowances and pay you, will you strip for us?"

Subtle they were not.

"No."

"How much money would we have to get to get you to strip?" another asked.

Sam and the chaperone, a nice young lady named Catalina Acosta, who had parked herself next to Sam, were watching this display, both of them struggling not to giggle as Dean desperate tried to extricate himself from the conversation.

"More than you've got on you right now."

Dean stomped over to Sam and Catalina and muttered, "Do I look like the kind of guy who hangs around with jailbait?" he asked.

"Yes."

"No."

The two chorused, Sam taking the perspective of someone who had seen Dean hit on jailbait. However, usually, the jailbait could at least pass in dim light as legal, whereas none of these girls could have passed as legal, even in pitch darkness.

Dean shot Sam a look, Sam shrugged and said, jerking his head at Catalina, "Okay, so I know you better than that, what about that girl, what was her name, in . . . what was it? That onion-named town-"

"Onion town?" Catalina put in with curiosity.

"It was named after some species of onion," Sam said. "If I could just remember . . ."

"Vidalia?" she asked.

"That was it," Sam said. "Vidalia, Georgia."

"You're a big geek," Dean groused. "And Elina was turning eighteen in two days, it doesn't count."

"She looked fifteen."

Dean had a happy grin of reminiscence on his face as he said, "She really, really wasn't."

Sam and Catalina rolled their eyes together, and Sam asked her, "I know I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but why _are_ Dean and I able to be in here for the night?"

She shrugged, looked a little nervous, and then said, "My Aunt owns the store, she made the call on this." Then she deliberately leered at Sam in a jokingly over-the-top way, and said, "I'm not complaining any more than they are." She hooked a thumb in the direction of the giggling teens.

Those teens chose that moment to collect themselves and march over to Dean, who looked far more terrified than a man who had once been ripped apart by hellhounds had any right to be at the sight of normal teenaged girls. "We have three hundred bucks," the one in the lead announced. "That should be enough to at least get your shirt off."

Dean sputtered. "Three hundred bucks? What the hell do you kids get as an allowance?"

The resultant answers ranged from twenty to twenty-five dollars, with the birthday girl adding that she had extra birthday money from distant relatives who didn't know what to get her.

Sam and Dean both paused, exchanging a long look of temptation. Three hundred bucks would cover motel costs for a few nights, or cover gas for a while or any number of other things. It was tempting.

Luckily for them, the problem ceased to be one because suddenly all the pillows in the room started to explode, and the various shelves started rattling from where they were moored, and food items and plastic utensils started flying through the air. It was chaos and the girls were screaming about earthquakes.

Dean, who had brought his walkman cum EMF metre, noted that it was going off like crazy, so it was pretty clear this was something spectral. Everything not nailed down was flying around. So the specialty pillows were exploding in every direction covering everything, including the ice cream cake, he noted in some dismay (he'd been hoping to cadge a piece). "Come on, everyone, let's get out of here!" he shouted, grabbing the nearest girl and tugging her towards the door.

Of course, the cake was flying around too, and by the time Sam and Dean had gotten all the girls out, they were covered in ice cream, icing and other unidentifiable gooey items. All this was, naturally, also coated in feathers.

Catalina put in a call to the various families to pick up the girls, bemoaning whatever it was that was causing the store to have these problems. Current thinking was some sort of ground instability under the building and a malfunctioning A/C system. The girls were all huddled together, watching as Dean and Sam took advantage of the watering system on the lawn out front, taking off their (purloined) security uniform shirts and wetting them to get the worst of the goo off.

"Well, I know that's certainly worth the money spent," Catalina said, sounding amused and a little breathless.

"Huh?" Sam asked. He turned around, hair damply clinging to his neck, his sodden and icing-covered shirt clutched in his hands.

Dean, equally damp frowned, adding, "What do you mean?"

She was saved from answering, by one of the girls, big-eyed and fixated on some point on Sam's sternum, dashing away from her mother for a moment, and stuffing something into Dean's pants pocket. "Wow," she said, glancing over at Dean, then back to Sam's pecs, and then running back to her mother and the two girls who would be riding home with them.

Dean reached into his pants pocket, pulling out a wad of cash, wrapped in a sheet of paper torn out of a school notebook.

_Dear security guys,_

_Since you got kinda trashed 'cause of my birthday, and 'cause you totally made all our days by taking off your shirts, here's the money. We said we'd give it to you if you took your clothes off. Also, to the taller guy, I'm so sorry we underestimated how hot you are, your abs are way better than your friend's and it's been a total privilege to see you guys. It was almost as good as having strippers for the party._

_Cathy, Lisa, Hannah, Winnie, Theresa, Tzipporah, Bojana and Ismene_

In different handwriting below was written,

_P.S. Check out Winnie's Facebook page! She's got pictures of you guys, they're really good!_

Dean stared at the note for so long, Sam finally plucked it from his nerveless fingers, read it and started making random vowel noises.

"How about I give you guys a lift?" Catalina suggested, chivvying them to her SUV. She got them back to their motel, by which time they had started to recover. Somewhat. All that recovery was shot to hell, when she told them, "I'll see you guys again soon. At least as soon as 'Winnie' gets those pics up."

The evening was spent determinedly figuring out what the thing in the building was, (a poltergeist) why it was there (abusive orphanage in the building many years before), why it had only started recently (it was the first use of that building since the orphanage closed down, and how to deal with it. They got their little baggies of crossroads dirt and angelica root and whatnot, sneaking in during the dead of night, got the spirit expelled and were packing to leave when Catalina showed up at their room.

"Aren't you guys on duty tonight?" she asked.

"Umm . . ."

She shook her head, regretfully. "I mean, we have a girls' night in and everything tonight," she told them. "A bunch of my friends are having a sort of graduation party. We'd like to have someone there. Just in case. You were so helpful when the last shift-thing happened."

"Well . . ." Dean was reluctant, but they could hardly leave then. Particularly since she looked truly nervous.

So they both climbed back into the uniforms and went out to the party. It was nothing like the last one. It was a room full of twentysomething women, ranging from pretty to raging hot, and when a few of them asked Dean to take his shirt off, he was happy to oblige. Especially since he got to watch several women in lingerie having a pillowfight.

Sam got isolated from Dean in a corner of the room talking esoterica on church dogma with a nice girl in a teddy his favourite shade of blue.

It was a very nice evening, and they even got paid the next morning by the Aunt, who gave them a bonus for putting up with the teens on top of everything. She'd just finished paying them when the phone rang, and she picked it up, "Special Effects Pillow Warehouse. How can I help you? . . . Yes . . . I know, I did. I can't believe it was so easy." She smiled at Sam and Dean and waved them off.

They left, and Dean asked Sam, "So, were you appalled at all the wanton activity last night?"

Sam was more interested in the text message from the girl in the blue teddy. "Huh? Sorry, I was just reading this text from Gina."

"Who?"

"The brunette in the blue teddy with the tattoo on her uh-"

"Oh. Why's she texting you?"

"We were talking about the church practices in relation to marital fidelity and practices in Mediaeval Spain," Sam said.

"So while I'm gettin' to see hot chicks have a pillowfight, you're talking geek."

"I guess," Sam said, flushing a little. "I mean, if you think talking about church acceptance of blow jobs is geek talk." He smirked triumphantly at Dean. "Especially where she felt like she had to demonstrate a few points with a practical example."

Dean's jaw dropped, and Sam took advantage of his shock to steal the car keys and take the driver's seat.

"She did?" Unhappily Dean flopped into shotgun. "Man, I have gotta learn me some good geek stuff."

Sam grinned at his brother, licking his finger, and marking a score of 'one' in the air.

"Bitch."

"Jerk."


	4. Couple on the Cake

Title: Couple on the Cake

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I don't own anyone you recognise, and I don't own the song title I borrowed for this fic, which is from the Steve Fox album _Small World_.

Summary: Magic, teenaged girls and that old, "We're not a couple, we're brothers," shtick.

Rating: PG-13.

Notes: Next in the _Cornfields or Cadillacs_ arc. Follows _That's My Story_, and it can probably be read as a standalone, but it really is part of a series.

* * *

It had been most of a year now, and the good luck which had started with free food at a pizzeria had continued so long, both Sam and Dean were getting really suspicious of it. They'd had free, almost free and half-price accommodations at various motels and hotels all year. Some of them really nice places which had actual stars on websites about those sorts of things.

There had been mountains of free coffees, snacks and things from waitstaff and counter staff who made just the right kinds of mistakes to guarantee them something free for their troubles. They'd been 1,000th customers (or variations on that theme) at what seemed like a thousand restaurants. There had been deals on gas, drinks and those occasional real paying jobs they picked up to get by on.

They'd been tipped by women with heavy boxes that needed an extra hand with the moving and gotten complimentary baskets of home-baked goods.

Then there was the law enforcement stuff.

Dean knew at least three times off the top of his head when they should definitely been caught with their fake IDs, knew of another bunch of times people who should never have taken Sam or him at his word about being FBI, CIA, CDC or whatever other bunch of letters he'd been playing at, had taken him or Sam at his word. They'd gotten cooperation from police, ATF, once even the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and US Air Force.

It wasn't that any (well, most) of these incidents were blatantly weird. It was that they just kept happening. And they were happening way past what could be considered mere good luck. They hadn't noticed at first because there had been the usual suspicious police, crappy motels, expensive Starbucks and all the usual expenses and troubles on the road. But the fact was that their money kept stretching way longer than it ought to, their credit cards kept stretching, and Sam even noticed one card which seemed – somehow – to have been paid off at least once by some weird accident of bookkeeping by someone at American Express.

It added up to something being not quite right.

This time, they'd landed at a motel where gay and lesbian couples, willing to be open about it, could stay at a reduced rate in a room, and get a complimentary basket and cheap meals at the attached motel restaurant. They'd walked in and the usual mistake was made about them being gay. By the time it had been figured out, they were already down as a gay couple.

The girl behind the counter had actually asked them four times if they were _really sure_ they weren't a couple.

"Yes," Dean told her. "We're really sure we're brothers, and we're really sure we're not having illegal incest."

"Oh," she said, looking disappointed. Then, by way of explanation, said, "Can you pretend for my boss, though? If I change the register now, he'll chew me out for making the mistake and I might get fired."

Dean twitched, but Sam, sympathetic, said, "If it comes up."

She grinned. "Thanks. I just . . . I'm sorry. Enjoy your stay!"

The brothers headed for their room, Dean muttering, "Every time. Every damn time." He turned to Sam. "It's your fault with your emo haircut. You should get a haircut."

Sam turned to him. "Why does this have to be my fault?" he demanded. "Maybe it's because you have . . . what did that guy in Atlanta say? Oh yeah, girly lips."

"You take that back."

"Make me."

They unlocked the door, walked in and tossed their bags onto the bed. And then Dean dove at his brother, intent on putting him in a headlock until he cried uncle. Or admitted Dean didn't have girly lips. Whichever.

Sam caught a glimpse of him in the mirror over the dresser, ducked out of the way and responded. It started off as sparring, turned into wrestling, and by the time a knock came to the door and the complimentary basket arrived, Dean was hairpulling and Sam was trying to use his greater reach for an octopus-like immobilisation.

In short, they were fighting like two four-year-olds, not two men who had been trained from early childhood to be able to best a Navy Seal.

The nice girl from the front desk walked in and said, on seeing them twined together on Sam's much disarranged bed, "You're really not gay?"

Two startled squawks emerged from the tussling brothers, and Dean did the only thing that came to mind to reply to the pretty desk clerk. "Oh, baby. I can show you just how 'not gay' I am." Then he aimed the smile that got girls to drop their panties like they were on fire at her. Sam flushed and buried his head in his hands, and the girl got wide-eyed, squeaked and ran away.

"Dude!" Sam said disapprovingly.

"I know," Dean said. Even he knew that had been too strong. "Although I think we should question her."

"About the case?" Sam asked. They were in town for a reason. There had been a rash of, "Abrupt atavistic coccygeal growths." It wouldn't have pinged their radar, but the lack of description had made Sam curious. Since all the victims were the parents of teenagers, it suggested something was up. A little more research had showed a run of boils on pretty teen girls at the school, sudden hair loss for some pretty young women in town and head lice on various teachers and other authority figures spending time with teens, it looked like something was probably going on.

"No," Dean said. "About the weird luck thing."

Sam grimaced. He was a little chagrined he'd missed it and Dean hadn't, but once it had been pointed out to him, he had to admit it was a little much. "You think that whatever it is, she might be in on it or affected by it?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno, Dean," Sam said. "I think we should wait to hear back from Bobby. I mean, I don't want to upset someone who's just being nice."

Dean made a face, but let it go. It wasn't hurting them for the moment, and the luck wasn't like the rabbit's foot either. That had just been thing after thing. With this, it was just more that they were a luckier than usual, not that there was no bad luck at all.

Instead they headed out to the school, telling people they worked for the CDC and were looking into the 'growths'. They interviewed the girls whose parents had them, and the teachers. For the moment, their good luck thing seemed to have pooped itself out. They found no one willing to answer any of their more unusual questions, and none of the girls seemed to have anything useful to say.

The other teen authority figures, which included several parents, were little more help. Although one couple with the growths admitted that, by an odd coincidence, the growths had appeared on the same night which their daughter had used to sneak out to a dance while she was supposed to be grounded. They hadn't noticed, having been so distracted by the growths, until she came back in, well past what was her normal curfew.

And then Sam and Dean found out what the growths were. The parents had tails.

These weren't any sort of vestigial tails, either. They were full-on monkey tails. One of the fathers was already getting used enough to it to use his tail to pick up the chips when he had his hands full with beer and the remote. His wife was somewhat unenthused by that particular development.

"We're going to have to do some research before we go any further," Sam told them with that disarming look of genuine caring he was so good at. "While we could wander around your home, getting into everything, we'd both rather have a better grasp on where we should be looking before we intrude any more."

"Thank you," the wife told them, smiling gratefully.

Dean rolled his eyes, was caught by the husband, who shot him a dark look, and then let Sam hustle him out of the house.

"What do you think?" he asked Sam as they made their way down the walk to the car. "Witch? Trickster? Something attached to their butts that looks like a tail?"

"What?" Sam asked, giving Dean a weird look.

Dean shrugged. "I'unno," he offered. "Just . . . like a tail-ish butt barnacle."

"Some days I really wonder if we're actually related," Sam told him. "Tail-ish butt barnacle?"

Choosing to ignore the insult, Dean said, "So . . . Witch?"

"Witch, definitely," Sam said. "But I'm not so sure she's an evil witch, just a misguided teenager."

"Man," Dean whined. "Even after you got body switched with that dork that hurt my car, and you're still defending the bitches."

"You're the one who couldn't tell it wasn't me," Sam said irritably. "Anyhow, those kids weren't evil either. Just really stupid."

They got into the car and Dean sighed, "So why are you thinking this isn't an evil witch?"

"Uh . . . how about the fact that the worst thing she's done is give people tails?" Sam said. "Look at the victims. Pretty girls at school, teachers, pretty women and parents."

Catching the train of thought, Dean said, "You think it's a teenaged girl who's trying to get her way, catch a boyfriend and sneak out at night?"

"Pretty much," Sam said. "Maybe a group of them."

"Would explain the parents."

"Exactly," Sam said. "I just want to look into things a little more. See if we can't narrow down who we should be going after and scaring straight."

"Uh . . . the girls with parents with tails?" Dean asked.

"And what if she's doing it as a favour for friends that they don't even know about?"

"Uh-huh."

"Also, what if it's a whole bunch of 'em?" Sam asked. "Do you want to run the risk of antagonising them and getting turned into something horrible?"

Dean snorted.

"They might do something to the car," Sam said. "Like magic it pink and turn it into a convertible." He paused, contemplated something, then said, "Or maybe a moped, like from the Archie comics."

Dean glanced away from the road long enough to fix Sam with a glare fervent enough to curdle milk. "Don't even joke about that."

Before anyone thinks to wonder, there had been an incident of boredom back when they were both kids and trapped at Pastor Jim's. They had read every Archie comic ever written, desperate for entertainment, and had a mutual pact to never use that against each other. It was a little like the pact regarding their respective collections of skin mags and not letting their dad know where the stashes were.

In the end, it turned out to be the one girl and she was working without anyone knowing about it.

"Why'd you do it?" Sam asked, being all sympathy. She was staring at both of them, virtually hypnotised, from the other side of the diner booth.

She jerked suddenly as she realised she'd been asked a question, and said, "Well, like, those popular girls are always, like . . . I dunno . . . monopolising all the cute guys in school? Y'know?" She flipped her long hair back. "So I just thought, that if they weren't so pretty, me and _my_ friends would be the pretty girls, and we'd have a chance."

Dean shot her an incredulous look. "You think it's just because-" He was cut off as Sam elbowed him sharply. He sent an annoyed look at Sam, _Seriously? You're gonna be sympathetic 'cause she can't get a date?_

Sam shot his own look back. _Just because you've always been the 'hot' one and never had any trouble getting laid . . ._

The teen caught the byplay, even if she didn't completely understand all the subtext, decided she didn't like Dean any more because he was a jerk, and switched her full focus to Sam. "_Any_how. So after Kari and her bitchy friends weren't looking so hot, I just thought . . . I'd make things better for me and my friends. Like, get back at Mr. Blake for giving me a C in History." She pouted. "I worked for like, a whole Saturday afternoon on that paper!"

Sam, who had never worked for less than three days on any given paper, twitched hard himself as he suppressed the urge to ask her how that passed for anything but minimal effort. "And so you gave him and some other teachers lice?"

"Exactly!" she said. "And Miss Stanson and Maureen Carver, and those girls on the college cheerleading squad? It's just totally annoying listening to the guys talk about which ones they'd boink if they'd even give them the time of day."

"So you gave them boils," Dean said. "How come you didn't give the guys the boils? It's not like those girls ever did anything to you. Like you said, they wouldn't give those boys the time of day."

"Duh! Like I would get caught dead dating a guy with boils all over his face." She looked at Dean as though he were unbelievably stupid.

"But . . . you . . . they . . ." Dean gave up, deciding that trying to understand her logic would just make his brain hurt.

Sam took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, and your friends' parents?"

"Well, there was this new club opening, I needed a distraction. Besides, Penny's parents totally deserved it. I mean, grounding her just because she was a little late for curfew? Seriously. It was just two hours."

With a grim look that said a lot about how much he was _not_ saying, Sam reached into his bag and pulled out the grimoire she'd been using. "Jenny, I know this is tempting but-"

"Yeah, yeah, black arts, damned soul . . . blah blah blah," she said dismissively. "Seriously, I read that book. There's nothing in there that's like, really bad." She frowned. "Where did you get my book from? Did you break into my house?"

"No," Dean said easily. "Your locker at school."

"What about this one?" Sam asked, distracting them both from the potential argument. "'A spell to ensure that the caster's face will be that of the subject's one true love.'"

She looked at him sceptically, grabbed the book, and looked it over with narrowed eyes. "Like, what's wrong with this one?"

"How about the presence of three-leaf ivy? You have to rub a mixture of that and a few other things into your face," Sam told her.

She looked blank.

Dean spoke up. "Three-leaf ivy is another common name for poison ivy. You do know that if you rub it in too much, it can create blisters that make some pretty wicked scars," Dean said.

Her eyes went wide. "Oh my God! Ew! Ew!"

Sam had been peering at the page and added, "I mean, you're also having to rub ash made from the guy's hair into your face. What happens if you accidentally got the wrong hair?"

"Or cat hair," Dean added gleefully. "Could turn out like that Hermione chick from Harry Potter."

She looked really horrified, and Sam added the coup de grace. "And think about this. Isn't graduation coming up? Do you want your parents to have tails in your grad photos?"

The full horror sank in and she hastily started taking off amulets and things, and setting them on fire to cancel the spells. Then she shoved the book at Sam. "I'm sorry. You are so right. This witch stuff is so icky and wrong."

"Glad I made my point okay," Sam told her with a smile.

She got up, and started to leave. Then she paused, smiled at Sam and said, "It's just so _wrong_ that a guy as hot as you is gay."

"What?" Sam said. Dean just went blank-faced and started blinking very slowly.

She grinned. "My cousin Kelsey is the one who checked you into the Starshine Motel. She described you guys to a tee." Then she was flouncing out the door, and Dean was dragging Sam to the car in his rush to confront the check-in girl at the motel.

It turned out she claimed she'd told her cousin about the hot gay guys while her boss was watching, and she'd had to justify the reduced price after all. As the boys headed to their room, she was heard on the phone saying, "I can_not_ believe how easy it was. I mean, it's not like I thought it was, but still . . ."

"I don't care if we have to pay full price," Dean groused to Sam, "We're not pretending to be gay for anyone. How'm I gonna get laid if chicks think I'm not interested?"

Rolling his eyes, Sam told his brother, "Please, like you don't get plenty of shallow sex."

Dean's eyes opened into giant pools of injured innocence. "Sammy, I haven't had any company but my hand for a whole week!"

"Oh! Oh my . . . gah! Dean! God! Now I have to scrub my brain out with steel wool!"

"You're just jealous 'cause it's been longer for you."

"Dean."

"Hey, don't think I don't know who orders all the motel porn around here."

"Dean!"

The thumping and squawks that sounded from behind the closed door led to quite a few knowing looks about the honeymooning antiquers that would have quite incensed Dean if he had known. Luckily for everyone else, Sam was too busy trying to get his older brother in a headlock for any of it to come up.


	5. No News

Title: No News

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, and I don't own the title, which is borrowed from the Lonestar song.

Rating: PG

Summary: So here's what's with all the luck they've been having.

Notes: This is apparently going to be an anodyne for finale. This is the last in the Cornfields or Cadillacs series. The original inspiration here was from a) a fanfic on this site, by one katheryne. It's actually a Spider-Man story, entitled "Just a Face on a Train," and b) from the fact that Castiel said that the Supernatural book series was going to become known as the Winchester Gospels. Well, having them known as the gospel truth would require someone realising that at some point. This sort of chronicles that point.

Notes 2: The menu I used for the five star restaurant is actually a place called Dakota's which is in Dallas Texas. I have no idea what it's actually like there, I just googled five-star restaurants. Second, the list of lucky animals and symbols I picked through comes off of the whats-your-sign website. I gave in and used Wikipedia for the convenience. The conehead is Fukurokuju, a Japanese god. Finally, approximately, without being too specific, there are roughly 215 people who Sam and Dean directly saved in the first three seasons. This presumes that the books haven't come out yet with season four and five. The other eighty-five people of the three hundred would presumably be people Sam and Dean saved who have posted their stories on the web site, but didn't make the books.

* * *

Bobby hadn't come up with anything on whatever weird good luck charm was tailing them. He sent them a list of possibilities to look into themselves, and told them to think really hard. He gave them a list of animals and asked them if there had been any odd run-ins with any of them. "Goldfish?" Dean asked, staring at the page. There was another page of symbols they needed to recall if they'd seen. "Saturn?" he added as he saw that. "What does a guy that ate his children have to do with anything?"

"Order and restoring balance," Sam said, dutifully, from the other side of the room. "I guess Bobby's thinking it might be an attempt to swing the pendulum the other way from all the really crappy luck we've had. Restitution, y'know?"

Dean blinked. "So, he's thinking it might be someone actually tryin' to help?"

"Anything's possible."

"Run-ins with fat, bald guys with cloth bags?"

Sam looked at his brother in exasperation. "We're looking at the possible physical manifestations of gods who might be doing something nice, because we have no point to look into this save the luck."

"Coneheads?"

"Are you going to take this at all seriously?"

"Dude," he said. "Look at this picture. Guy's a conehead."

Rolling his eyes, Sam ground out, "He's a god of wealth and longevity from Japanese myth."

Dean dropped his collection of notes to the table and said, "I can't look at this any more. I'm hungry, bored and I can't think of anything either of us ran into that meets these descriptions. When the hell would we have run into a black deer?"

Sam smiled a little even as he stood, "An impala _is_ kind of-"

"Stop right there," Dean said, pointing at him. "Let's go, there's a burger calling my name."

They left the coffee shop where they had been doing their research and started down the block. Heading through the crowds of people on their way to lunch in downtown Boston Dean saw what seemed like more people on the one block than lived in some of the towns he and Sam had jobs in. It was a little overwhelming in its way.

They spotted the man at the same time. He was a skinny guy in a pricey-looking suit, his head buried in a newsletter of some sort. He'd just stepped onto the street, and didn't see the bus coming toward him. In perfect unison, Sam and Dean reached out, each one grabbing an arm, and hauled him back onto the sidewalk. The bus thundered by, and the man's eyes went wide as he realised how close the call had been. "Oh my God! I could have been killed!"

"Well, maybe-" Dean started to say the man should pay attention to where he was going. He never finished.

"You saved my life!"

Sam tried. "I-"

"Both of you!"

"Uh-"

"Thank you! I can't . . . I can't thank you enough. Look," the man said. "My name is Richard Hoffman. Let me take you two out to lunch. I owe you everything. My son's bar-mitzvah is this week and my daughter's wedding is next month." He turned, got a good look at the brothers and made a sort of squeaking noise when he saw their faces.

Sam and Dean exchanged looks at this. This had never happened to them. Sure, there had been the occasional supernatural victim who'd made them sandwiches for the road, and some of them were even grateful, but they'd never had anyone quite this effusive. And for pulling him out of the way of a bus? That barely registered on their personal scale of lifesaving.

The squeaking thing was really weird too. However, one quick exchange of looks, a whole conversation on the matter held in tilted heads, narrowed eyes, earnest puppy-dog faces and head shakes had the two agreeing. "Okay," Dean said. "I'm Dean Winchester, this is my brother, Sam."

"Winchester," said the man with a frown. "Like," the brothers prepared for the inevitable comment on the rifle. "The cathedral in England?"

"Uh . . . yeah," Sam said. "I guess."

_The hell?_ Dean's face said to Sam, even as they followed the guy down the street.

_I don't know_, Sam responded with a shrug.

The man led them to a large, five-star hotel, inside and down to a restaurant. Dean frowned as he looked at the menu and saw the prices. Twenty bucks just for a starter, fifty bucks for a main course, and some of the things on there, Dean didn't even know what they were. "Uh . . ."

Sam leaned over and said, "Wow. Just be glad there _are_ prices on the menu."

"What do you mean?"

"If there aren't any prices, it means only people who don't need to even ask are eating there."

"What?"

Richard spoke up from the other side of the table. "Like Bill Gates. He has so much money, dropping a thousand bucks on a meal for two wouldn't faze him."

"Oh." Dean subsided and went back to looking at the menu.

"Look, before you two get all squeamish," the businessman told them, "I'm a stock market broker, okay? I actually have a portfolio worth more than a million dollars and a vacation home in the Virgin Islands. Let me treat you."

He said it so matter-of-factly that they both stared. "That's . . . an interesting way to put it," Sam said hesitantly.

"Well, I want to thank you both for saving my life, for letting me be sure to see my kids get married, and I want to do it properly. That means that I need to be sure that you both actually get what you want off the menu. I can afford an expensive thank you. I wouldn't do this every week for everyone, but I'm not some accountant eking out a living." He looked at them earnestly, and Sam nodded. Dean just buried himself in the menu, looking for something he could understand what the hell it was.

"So, we can get an appetiser, and a main course and a dessert?" qualified Dean. "I mean, the sky's really the limit?"

"Really."

When the waiter came by, Dean ordered a pan-seared half Maine lobster with baby arugula, pickled red onions, hazelnuts and chardonnay herb dressing for a starter and a porterhouse steak for his main course. Sam ordered a spinach salad (which had Dean making a face), with bacon, Manchego cheese, grape tomatoes and warm cherry vinaigrette, and the banana leaf steamed grouper ("Grouper?" mouthed Dean, "Banana? What the hell is a honey cilantro horseradish glace?").

The food arrived and Dean dove into his lobster with gusto, groaning the whole while. Sam flushed and tried not to look at anyone because the noises Dean was making about the food were really embarrassing. Then he tried his salad and was inches away from moaning himself. It wasn't just that the salad was fresh, and made right there in the restaurant, or that the dressing was also made right there. It was that he'd never had anything that just had so much wonderful taste and complexity.

"Good, huh?" Richard smiled from where he was having a Caesar salad. "Personally, this is my favourite restaurant in the city."

Dean looked up, his eyes wide, and said, mouth stuffed full, "Fo, 'ood!"

"Dean," Sam moaned in humiliation.

While Dean was in raptures and, in spite of his distaste for it in principle, stealing bits of Sam's salad, Sam chatted with Richard. He told the other man some stories about his and Dean's life on the road, and Richard talked about the things that happened with him at the office and his family. When Sam shyly admitted to tracking research into urban myths, Richard offered to put him in contact with a publisher he knew that might be willing to help Sam organise all that research into a popular book on the origins of urban legends.

"Might be nice for you two to have another source of income besides odd-jobbing," Richard told him with a wry smile. "I mean, take that story you told me about the origins of Bloody Mary," he said. "I would think that would go over well as both a true crime thing and as a popular ghost story thing."

The main course arrived, and Richard briefly excused himself to go to the bathroom. Or "the facilities," as he called them.

"Dude," Dean said, eyes shining as he stared happily at his steak, "We need to save the lives of more rich people. This is awesome."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, we are not going to look for rich people jobs in the hope of getting free food."

"But Sam!" Dean whined around a mouthful of sweet, juicy, perfectly broiled steak.

Sam determinedly ignored him, intent on enjoying his fish. Dean mocked him about it mercilessly, but still offered to trade a bite of the steak for some of the fish. He said it was because he wanted to be sure Sam didn't miss out, but the size of the chunk Dean stole from Sam's plate in the process said a lot about Dean's wish to experience something new. And have even more food.

Richard came back, sat down and told them, "Listen. I just dropped by the front desk. You said you were expecting to be in town for the next week. I've paid for rooms here, in advance, and I've told them to put anything you eat here at the restaurant on my tab."

"Richard, this is too much," Sam said, scandalised. "These rooms cost too much a night for you to pay that for us!"

Dean's eyes narrowed, considering, but he let Sam argue. Sam lost the argument, and left to find out from the front desk where their rooms were and how much Richard was going into debt over it. Dean just shook his head and looked at the dessert menu. They'd figure it all out later. Naturally, he went with the key lime pie. It was pie.

Sam came back, shaking his head in disbelief, and ordered a crème brule. Dean was scandalised this time by the lump of white stuff with the caramel-coloured stuff on top. "What the hell is that?"

"Custard with burned sugar on top," Sam said. Distilling the dessert down to its most plebeian essence.

"And you want that instead of pie?"

"How about you try it before you make fun of it?" Sam dropped a forkful onto Dean's plate and stole some of his pie before there could be retaliation.

Dean made a face, tried the custard anyway because even the salad had been good, which was crazy because it was freakin' spinach, and decided that it wasn't too bad, even if it wasn't pie. As the three men headed out of the restaurant together, Dean glanced over at one of the stores on the main floor. It had a small display of leather jackets in the front window, and he almost tripped over his own feet when he spotted one in particular. "Man, that's just like Dad's old jacket."

"Yeah," Sam said, regretfully. "It's too bad you had to let that weird v- guy cut it up."

They said goodnight to Richard, trotted back to the car, collected their things and headed up to where there were two rooms, connected by a door for them. Sam had just flopped onto the bed in his room, considering whether he should get up and shower or just not move for a whole week, when Dean wandered in, shaking his head.

"I think we definitely need to ask this Richard guy about whether he's had any weird run-ins lately," Dean told him.

Sam reluctantly sat up. "You think he's got something to do with our luck thing?"

"You don't?"

Sighing, Sam said, "You're right. This is really way too much. The food was one thing, but these rooms, these are the cheap ones. They go at $350 bucks a night."

Dean whistled.

Sam, looking into his collection of clothes, including the pretend-to-be-official suit, noticed that the whole mess was starting to get wrinkled, rank and generally pretty disreputable. He slipped into Dean's room while Dean surfed the tv in his room and pretended that America's Next Top Model was porn (which, let's be honest, sometimes it kinda was). Dean's clothes (and suit) were in a similar state. He made a quick call to the main desk, reconfirmed that Richard really was going to pay for everything, and called someone up to do their laundry and dry clean the suits.

He knew it wasn't particularly right to take advantage of the service, but it might be nice to have everything cleaned properly with enough detergent and not with everything crammed into the one machine because they really couldn't afford too many loads.

He came back into his room and, noting that Dean was seated on the wingback chair, flopped back onto the bed, happily spread eagled. His fingertips were only just over the edges of the bed, and it was soft and clean and nice and comfy and _wonderful_.

"Enjoying yourself there, princess?" Dean asked amused. Sam had kind of a goofy smile on his face.

"Forget your magic fingers," Sam told him. "This is fantastic."

"Well," Dean told him, "I hate to interrupt you communing with the mattress, but we really need to do some research. Maybe into connections between Richard and those people we can be sure were giving us somethin' extra."

Sam sighed, regretfully, but he pulled himself up. "Then I guess we'd better go to the library. We also have to keep looking into something that might cause this, supernaturally." And off they went, and spent an entire afternoon finding absolutely nothing. Coming back to the hotel, all their clothes had been delivered to their rooms, clean and fresh-smelling. Dean had squinted doubtfully at Sam as his younger brother had happily buried his nose in "Mountain Fresh"- scented clothing.

The next morning, they both stumbled out of bed, having slept on the most wonderful beds either of them could recall sleeping on. Both of them wandered out into the hall, to run into Richard, smiling at them, carrying a gift box and asking them to breakfast at a nearby place – his treat. "But first," he added, "Here." He handed the box to Dean, who opened it and promptly found the jacket he'd commented on the day before.

"That's it," Dean snapped, and grabbed the man, dragging him into his hotel room. "What the hell is going on?"

"What?"

Sam stood, using his height to loom in a way he'd been told was particularly intimidating. "We've been having runs of unbelievable good luck. But someone who would be willing to pay for meals at five-star restaurants, more than thirty-five hundred for hotel rooms for a week and a leather jacket that I know costs at least five hundred bucks? That's too damn much."

"Something's goin' on, and you're going to explain it to us."

Richard stared at them for a moment, then folded like a cheap lawn chair. "I'm part of the network."

"The what?" the boys chorused.

"The network," Richard repeated. "What happened was that Vaughn Reynolds-"

"Who?" Dean asked.

Richard shook his head a little in reproof. "The priest at Our Lady of Angels church. In Providence? Rhode Island?"

Sam opened his mouth, but Dean beat him to it. "With the awesome magic fingers in the motel."

Richard chuckled. "Yeah."

"Wait . . ." Sam said. "You've read Chuck's books."

Richard frowned. "You mean the Supernatural series by Carver Edlund? Yeah."

"Oh God," Dean said. "So . . . this is what?"

The businessman shot them a look. "I was explaining that."

"Sorry," Sam sank onto the bed, and when Dead just continued glaring, grabbed him and forced him down.

Richard sat on the wingback chair and continued explaining. Father Reynolds had found a new sense of purpose after the experience. After all, sure he'd been a priest, he'd believed in higher powers and the afterlife, but it had all been based on faith. These two young men had come to his church, and because of them, he'd gotten to truly see his friend go to his eternal rest. He'd been able to see a spirit go to the light. It had not only renewed his faith, it had changed it. Because it wasn't faith any more. It was something he'd seen with his own eyes.

And then he'd found the Supernatural books. Or rather, he'd found a book entitled, _Houses of the Holy_. He'd recognised himself in it. He'd recognised the people and the events in it. Then he'd gone looking for the other books and the people in them.

There were a lot of people. Andrea and Lucas Barr, Jerry Panowski, Monica and Charlie Holt, Dr. Lee in River Grove, Diana Ballard, Dr. Garrison, Lori Sorenson – the list was a long one. It got longer when you added in people who hadn't made it into the books. People who had been saved by Sam, Dean or John and could recognise the Winchesters from the car and the speech patterns and the descriptions.

Father Reynolds had found them. He'd found fans and believers and had even managed to get to meet Chuck. He'd seen what Sam and Dean did. The priest had read all the books and read between the lines to see what they had to deal with.

"So he came up with the idea of the network," Richard explained. "Everyone in the network knows someone, or just really believes the rest of us, that the two of you exist."

"So you decided to do what, exactly?" Sam asked.

Richard smiled a little wryly. "We all agreed that what you both do, and other hunters like you, is as much a public service as police work, firefighting, the National Guard, Animal Control – you name it. All things being equal, you'd be getting paid a regular wage and have benefits like other civil servants," he told them. "But you're not. So what we try to do is . . . help. Just a little. A discount here, or a freebie there."

Sam and Dean just stared. The notion that it was simple gratitude by the people they'd saved had never even occurred to them.

Their new acquaintance reached for Sam's laptop bag. "May I?" he asked. Sam nodded in spite of himself, and let Richard boot it up.

"So . . . this whole thing," Dean gestured around at the hotel, "This is 'cause you're in the club?"

"Not entirely," Richard said. "My sister was in that bank in Milwaukee with the two of you. She saw her evil twin try to kill you both. We heard, later, about poor Ronald Reznik and his theories about the bank robbers. It all came together after Father Reynolds sent us a copy of _Nightshifter_."

Sam absently tapped in his password, fascinated by the whole story. Then Richard went online, quickly typing in a website, and putting in a password. It was like a fan site, but completely different. Pictures of the Winchesters were posted on it. And after a moment or two, Sam and Dean realised what Richard was showing them. It was stories from people who had been saved, or the friends and family of people who had been rescued by them. There were posts from people about the things they'd done to ease Sam and Dean's lives, whether it was a little illicit discount or a doctor or nurse letting them get away with not using the insurance cards.

There were phone numbers posted of hunters to call if you had a problem, or government officials who would be willing to lie on the Winchesters' behalf about them being anything from FBI to regular police to secret service.

Dean stared for a minute, and then said, "It didn't occur to you to let us know this was goin' on so we wouldn't freak out about it?"

"Would you have accepted the help?" Richard asked. "Because from what I'd seen, you both seemed pretty independent and would have treated it like charity rather than payment for services rendered."

"I . . . uh . . ."

Sam bit his lip. "If we asked y'all not to do this, would you stop?"

"No." The other man looked at them seriously. "We've kept track. Setting aside things we can't even guess at, there are at least three hundred people you directly saved from something when they were in imminent peril that can be found in the books or who have posted on this web site. I'm not counting the ghosts and monsters that you stopped who can't kill again, but because of those, you've saved literally thousands of people. And the friend and family of those you saved? We're pretty damn grateful too.

"Yes, I'm thankful you kept me from being run over by that bus. I'm also thankful you saved my sister from being murdered by some freak with her face. I'm thankful you're out there keeping planes from crashing so I can feel safe when I go on vacation. I'm thankful that there are children alive today because you're willing to risk your lives for them." He looked at the brothers, almost pleading with them to understand. "You put your lives on the line for nothing. No money, no benefits, just to save lives. I can't do that. Most of us can't. But what we _can_ do is make sure that you have a little more money. We can make sure that you have a bed somewhere. We can try to make it so you get something back for all the things you do."

"Um . . ." There was nothing Sam could say to this heartfelt confession, and Dean looked deeply uncomfortable. "This is . . . uh . . ."

Dean took a deep breath, then suddenly decided to let his pride take a hit. "Can we have a list of doctor's phone numbers, and maybe the Fibby types?" he asked. "I mean, so we can know if there's someone close to patch us up or call or whatever?"

Their new friend grinned, and told them, "It's all organised on the site, actually. You have to have a sponsor to join up, but I could sponsor you both-"

"Anonymously," Sam cautioned. "We're not celebrities."

"Of course," Richard reassured him. "The reason your pictures are there is so that we could recognise you to help you if we needed to."

A few minutes later, Sam and Dean had access to the Network. Sam was paging around, already making notes about places to tell Bobby about, and muttering to himself about contacting the various officials on the list so that they could stop harassing Bobby about pretending to be the head honcho at whatever federal agency they were pretending to be.

Dean looked at Richard and said, "So, you're really serious about this?"

"Yeah." The other man looked at Dean. "Are you in town for anything in particular?"

He shrugged. "We were lookin' into the weird luck. Boston's a big city. When you're looking for something this big, you need better resources."

"Were you going to leave then?" Richard looked pleadingly at Dean.

"Why're you lookin' at me like that?" Dean asked.

"Well . . ."

"Well what?"

"My wife would want to meet you both. My sister's become her best friend and she'd never forgive me if I didn't bring you over for dinner, and . . . well . . . my brother-in-law really _does_ want to publish a book of the historical research you and Sam have done." The other man went back to looking pleadingly at Dean. "My wife makes a mean peach cobbler," he offered.

"Sammy?"

A put-upon sigh. "I know you made your decision based on the cobbler, Dean."

"So that's a yes?" Richard grinned eagerly at both of them.

"Yes," they chorused back. Then Sam sniffled a little, and Dean came over to read what had made him do that. Richard called home to his wife to tell her _everything_, while Dean ribbed his brother about his girly tendencies and Sam pointed out that Dean was getting teary-eyed over the touching stories of the people they'd saved and the sweet thank-yous on the page.

"Man," Dean said as he stole control of the laptop from Sam, "Look at this. A timeline of our lives. Makes me feel like I'm in a country song."

Sam snorted. "You didn't feel like that before?" He started ticking points off on his fingers. "Mom died and we had an unsettled childhood with a drill-sergeant father, your girl dumped you, mine died, yours dumped you again, I had to kill another one, the kid you thought was yours the mother swears he isn't . . ." He trailed off meaningfully.

Richard finished his call and said, "Now. I wanted to take you both out to breakfast. There's a wonderful little place down the street that does breakfasts. They make the best eggs Florentine in the city."

They got up to follow, and Dean asked Sam in an undertone, "What's Florentine eggs?"

"Poached eggs with spinach and Hollandaise sauce on an English muffin."

Dean shot his brother a weird look. "Spinach on eggs? Why would you want to do that to eggs?"

"What do you have against spinach, Dean?"

"It's spinach."

"That didn't stop you from eating _my_ salad last night," Sam told him. "Green things are good for you, Dean."

"That's not what you said when I tried to give you that potato, that time."

"That's because potatoes aren't supposed to be green."

"See? Not good."

"How can you decide that all green things are bad. I know you like granny smiths. See?" Sam mocked. "You're wrong."

"_You're_ wrong," Dean muttered back.

And they followed Richard to the elevator.


End file.
